New year rings in new look for cosmetic crowd.(use of cosmetic surgery increases)(Brief Article)

When people return to work after the holidays' some folks around the office will be sporting new looks. They may even be hard to recognize because they've used their vacation time to undergo cosmetic surgery.

Houston plastic surgeons have experienced a rush of patients that began in mid-November.

And many of the patients who have come to Dr. Franklin Rose, attending physician for the Texas Institute of Plastic Surgery, are women whose husbands or boyfriends gave them the cosmetic procedures as gifts.

Rose says he has performed an average of six procedures a day for four weeks running.

The most common holiday procedures, he says, have been …